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Chapter 31
My lungs threatened to burst from my raging heartbeat. Fear shackled my feet to the ground. I imagined shredding Yarn for his betrayal. A cold hand wrapped around my waist, squeezing it, draining the life out of me. I wasn’t so much frightened about losing my own life, but fear for the panthers and the resistance had my insides quaking.
“Do not lose hope,” I shouted to the group of shifters I led. “We have the advantage of greater numbers.”
Mothers and children sobbed. Fear, icy and numb, swept through the crowd. Phantom set his father down.
The guards pulled their swords, the metal glinting in the moonlight.
“They’ll kill us!” someone shrieked.
Time to be the leader Grimm wanted me to be. Time for my rousing speech. Time for me to live or die.Sea God, help me!
“You can choose to die as a slave or die as a hero!” I shouted, stepping forward, charging my magic with all I had to take care of these creeps so no more people got injured.
Yarn grinned like the filthy rat he was. “Your magic don’t work in here, love. No one’s does. There’re runes etched into the fence and buried in the ground.”
That flicker of power I’d felt went out like a flame without air.
Sea God!He was right.
Terror raked through my body. Without my magic, we were in trouble. I took stock of what we had. Over one hundred strong. Most couldn’t fight, but a larger group than the twenty guards could. But we were unarmed. I had a dagger and Phantom a sword. Not enough to beat back these creeps. We’d have to disarm the guards and kill them with their own weapons.
Many in the group looked to me for instruction.
I swallowed hard, glancing at Phantom for reassurance as he readied his sword.
“Wait, son,” his father said, grabbing him by the shoulder, holding him back. “I know where the runes are along the fence. They also stop us from transforming.”
I recalled a conversation with Phantom about his father being a history teacher and wondered if he could read the marks on Shadow’s and Flare’s collars. Would he be able to help free them?
“I scratched them out once but got caught and beaten,” Phantom’s father said. “From then on, they had guards patrolling every rune location during the day. If I can get to them again, I might be able to help.”
Hope ignited in my chest. Awakening the shifters’ ability to transform would make a huge difference in this battle.
Phantom bent in front of his father. “Get on my back, Papa.”
So many words caught on my tongue. I wanted to tell him to come back to me. But all I could manage was an order to the rest of the group to provide him a diversion. “Shifters, capture the guards’ swords!” I yelled to the tune of snarling and growling. “Spare none of them.”
A mob of angry shifters bounded forward. Some were cut down for their efforts, stabbed in the guts, slashed across their chests. Thanks to the sheer power of numbers, the crowd quickly overpowered the guards. Shifters threw themselves upon the guards’ backs and arms, weighing them down, bringing them crashing to their knees. Soon, every last guard was dead. Yarn had tried to make a run for it but was brought down by a group of three female shifters. They smashed his head into the ground, beating and kicking him, forcing me to look away.
Once our opposition had been neutralized, the crowd bent their heads, as if praying for the departed. Sparks of energy snapped off a few of the shifters. Their eyes blazed with varying colors, depending on which race they belonged to.
Phantom and his father had made it!
But for some reason, none of the shifters transformed. Was it because they were paying their respects right now or because the runes prevented a part of their ability from working?
Tuning into my own power, I felt it flare inside me, but not enough to do anything significant. Hurl a few glass daggers maybe, but that was it. The urge to gaze into my mirror called to me, and I tugged it out of my pocket to check on Shadow and the rest of the resistance. My heart hammered at discovering them all rounded up in a circle and surrounded by guards. They needed our help before they were slaughtered.
“I’m going to need every able-bodied fighter we can spare,” I shouted in a shaky voice. “If we were ambushed, then no doubt my friends were, too. We cannot leave without them and the batch of new shifters being delivered tonight.”
“What about the children?” a mother cried.
I scanned the crowd, counting about fifteen who looked to be younger than eighteen sun cycles, and about forty women and mothers, the rest fifty and over.
“All mothers, children, and the elderly, you are free to go!” I shouted. “Head for the hills with the trail of poppies. There, you will find the tunnels. Wait for us there. If we don’t make it back, you must travel through them alone until you reach the resistance.”
“What if we don’t want to go?” a young woman shouted.
